2. THE SONG OF Revelation 11:17-18 We give thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art and who avast; because thou hast taken thy great power, and didst reign.--These words of praise to God are further proof that the pronoun "he" in verse 15 refers to God. The vision pictures a time when God's rewards had come to the righteous and his rejection of the wicked had taken place. The words "didst reign"--aorist tense in the Greek--indicate a completed past action; God had entered upon his final, eternal rule, and the heavenly creatures were ascribing thanksgiving to him because his reign had begun. 18 And the nations were wroth, and thy wrath came, and the time of the dead to be judged, and the time to give their reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, the small and the great; and to destroy them that destroy the earth.--In their song of praise the elders look back to the final struggle when the wickedness of the nations caused the last great battle between right and wrong, vividly described in Revelation 19:11-21, followed by the final judgment as pictured in Revelation 20:11-15, and the proper rewards were given to both classes. The description of the righteous as prophets, saints, small and great, does not mean different rewards to different classes; it is only a rhetorical way of saying that the righteous of all classes will spend eternity with God and his Christ. Destroying the wicked who cursed the earth with their sins is the final proof that this section refers to the judgment and that glad day when all the redeemed enter upon the joys of their eternal home. The very thought should fill righteous souls with inexpressible ecstasy! The logical division of the book at Revelation 11:19 forces the following symbols to cover substantially the same time as the preceding series, for the end of the world closes both series. This is evident because Revelation 11:18 says it is "the time of the dead to be judged," and Revelation 20:12 says that John saw "the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books." If the first series ends with the judgment, the second series would have no place in time unless they were presenting the same period from different viewpoints. More than once we will be called to note the fact that a new vision or set of symbols is carrying us back over ground already surveyed. Such reviews will either present the same event with a different scene or give a detailed description of what has had only brief mention. Here the first set of symbols comes to an end. Evidently they were designed to encourage the saints to be faithful "unto death," by pointing out many of the struggles that would fall to the lot of Christ's followers. They were to impress Paul's declaration that "through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God." (Acts 14:22.) May our hearts rejoice in the glorious anticipation of the blessed eternal kingdom, while in another set of symbols we restudy the things that had to happen to God's children.